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She giggled the way I hoped she would, and shook her head. “He never talked to me. He never said anything.”
“He had a dick the size of a pinhead, didn’t he?” I asked bitterly. “Literally, the tiniest dick on earth.”
She shrugged her small, tired shoulders. “I don’t know. I couldn’t really judge.”
Of course she couldn’t. Motherfucking fuck. “Is there anything else he did to you that I should know about?” I asked. “You can tell me anything. I don’t want to hurt you later because I’m not aware.”
There was a long silence and I realized she was crying. I held her against me while I folded up the paper and shoved it into my pocket. I didn’t think I’d forget anything she’d told me, not for the rest of my life. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for all the things you went through. Someone should have helped you. Your teachers. Your mom. Why didn’t you tell them? Did he threaten you?”
“My mom knew.”
I thought I must have misheard her. “What?”
She took a long, slow breath. “My mom knew. In the beginning she told me to ‘honor my father,’ that it said so in the Bible. Later she said it was my fault, that the devil was inside me tempting my father. She said if I told anyone what was going on, she’d say I was mentally ill or using drugs. That she’d yank me out of dance and have me sent to juvenile detention. She said I would get raped there every day.”
Bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch, fucker, bitch.
“She didn’t…she didn’t want…she wouldn’t…” Ashleigh pulled away from me and swiped at her tears. “She liked my father’s money, I guess, but she didn’t want to sleep with him. So…”
“So she kept quiet while he came to you.”
“Yeah. I felt pretty trapped. There was only one way I could think of to get away from them. I had to win a scholarship to an out-of-town ballet school, and I did.” Her face was awful, driven.
“Who helped you?” I asked. “A teacher? Your dance teacher?”
“Yes. Miss Melanie. She helped me apply to a company school in New York, and helped set up the audition. My parents didn’t want me to go, but Miss Melanie wouldn’t take no for an answer. She flew me there herself when they refused.”
I had a sickening thought. “Do you still dance to get away from them? Do you enjoy it at all?” It horrified me to think she still danced from that survival compulsion. “They can’t touch you now, you know. You could quit tomorrow. Do whatever you want. If you needed money, I’d give you money to go back to school. Whatever.”
She shook her head. “I like it, most of the time. I don’t want to quit. But someday, in a few years, I might like to stop, get married. Have a normal life. And to do that…” She gave me a hopeful look. “I need to get fixed.”
I ran a finger down the side of her cheek, brushing away tears. How many of them had she cried as she soldiered through her hellish life? “I’m going to fix you,” I said. “Are you off tomorrow?”
“I’m off every Monday and Tuesday,” she said. “But tomorrow’s Christmas.”
“It’s as good a day to start as any. As long as you’re clear, it’s a good day for me. Every Monday we’ll work on things, you and me, until you’re better. Okay?”
It was the best I could do at that moment. What I really wanted to do was fly to Cowskull and choke the last of Joe Keaton’s miserable life from his lungs. Then I’d move on to Doreen. What was an appropriate punishment for a mother who’d sentenced her daughter to sexual abuse from the age of nine until she could escape her own family? I squeezed Ashleigh’s shoulders.
“Do you mind sleeping here tonight?” I asked. “I don’t want to send you home alone after the brutal conversation we just had.”
She looked surprised. “I don’t have any pajamas. Or a toothbrush.”
“All the toiletries you need are in the bathroom, and I’ll bring you one of my shirts.”
I waited on the bed for her to settle in, to make sure she wasn’t on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I lent her a shirt even though one of Mem’s would have fit her better. I wanted it to be mine, even if it hung off one shoulder and reached almost to her knees. I patted the bed beside me. “Come here.”
She crawled onto the covers and settled next to me. “Thanks for lending me your shirt.”
I eyed the gaping neckline. “It fits great.”
She laughed and yanked the collar up a little. After her tears earlier, that laughter was the most beautiful sound in the world. “Merry Christmas, Liam,” she said, staring at my chest. I was still wearing the goddamned deer sweater.
I put my hand over the garish design. “Merry Christmas to you too. When you wake up, go downstairs. Mem will get you anything you need. Coffee. Tea. Breakfast.” I touched her cheek. “What about tonight? Do you need some curtains to hang up around the bed? Some blankets?”
She gave a half-smile. “Are you kidding?”
“Yes.”
She sobered, tracing a finger along a seam of the comforter. “I tore all my curtains down tonight. The ones on the bed you gave me. One of them ripped.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I was tired of being scared. I was tired of being scared of you. I’m glad I came over.”
I took her hand. It looked so small next to mine. “Thanks for hanging in there this evening. I know it was uncomfortable for you.”
“I’m sorry I lied. I won’t do it again.”
“I know.”
She stared down at our hands. “If I was your sub, what would you have done to me for lying? If we were, you know, in a scene?”
“Do you really want to know? It might scare you.”
“I really want to know.”
I took a deep breath. “Since it was a first offense, and I kind of understood why you did it, I would have been somewhat lenient. I would have tied you to this bed on your stomach, wrists and ankles, and…” I looked into her curious eyes and stood up, and crossed to a long, low bureau on the far side of the room. I opened the middle drawer and sorted through until I found what I wanted. I carried it back to the bed and handed it to her. “I would have used this strap, probably. It’s not the heaviest one I have, but it hurts. I would have given you twenty good strokes with it. Enough to make an impression.”
She stared at it, blinking, turning it over in her hands. “Will you… Will you show me what one would have felt like? One stroke?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Show you? Right now?”
“I’m curious.”
Even as she said it, her voice quavered a little. “I don’t know, Ash.” I took it away from her. Bad, bad idea to bring out a toy tonight. She looked scared, yes—but she also clearly wanted to know how it felt. And I wanted to use it on her. “Like I said, it really hurts.”
She stared back at me, biting her lip. I wasn’t made of iron.
“Okay. Lay on your stomach.” I got up from the bed to walk around to her side. By the time I got there she was on her tummy, her arms clenched beneath her. “I don’t accept that position,” I said. “It’s defensive. If I was punishing you, I’d make you open yourself up to it.” Because you’re mine. The words came from nowhere, echoing in my head. She looked up at me in question, still scared, still curious. I laid the strap beside her and took her arms in a gentle but firm grip. I spread them to either side of her, then I made her open her legs—not as much as I would have for a real punishment, but enough to feel an acute loss of control.
“Are you sure you want this?” I said. “We can stop now.”
“No. I want to see. I deserve it anyway for lying.”
I sat down beside her. “Already topping from the bottom, are we?”
&nb
sp; “What does that mean?”
I stroked her hair, only to keep myself from molesting her more alluring body parts. She lay so my shirt covered her panties, but the outline of her ass was temptingly obvious. “It means that, as the dominant, I should decide what you deserve, and I should decide when, where, and how to punish you. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to do this, should I?”
“It’s a little early in the game for rules and punishments. But if you really want to know what it feels like…”
I stood and picked up the strap. She wanted to feel one hard stroke. Okay, I’d give her one. “You can’t move or turn,” I warned. “I’m going to put a hand on your back to keep you still.”
She made some strained sound of agreement. I noticed her hands creeping in again. “Arms out,” I said. “Over your head and still.”
She obeyed, her entire body vibrating with tension. I could feel it under my palm. I drew my other arm back and landed a solid whack across her ass cheeks. It wasn’t that hard. I wasn’t going to deal a full blow to a newbie submissive who wasn’t even warmed up, but I wanted it to be hard enough to impress her. It left a mark, although it would be gone by morning.
She didn’t make a sound.
“Well, that’s one,” I said. “What do you think? Could you take twenty?”
She turned to look at me, rubbing the place I’d strapped her. My cock was instantly hard as hell. I walked away from her to put the strap away, and also to put distance between us. “It still burns,” she said when I got back. “It tingles.”
“After twenty good ones, your ass would be on fire. You’d have trouble sitting down for a while.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it? To remind me of the bad thing I did?”
I gave her a look. “You’re learning a lot tonight. But right now, you’re supposed to be heading off to dreamland.” And I need to go somewhere and masturbate. Furiously. I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Is your butt okay, brave and curious one?”
